There are very real, life-threatening risks associated with working in afflicted areas. Yet those who choose to take those risks or have just been exposed are, in many cases, tainted by their association.

Beatrice Akoth had never wanted or planned to have nine children, but she had no choice. Although the idea is incomprehensible for many of us, Beatrice, like millions of other women and girls, had no access to contraception when she desperately needed it.

It's a big week for Colorado senatorial candidate Cory Gardner, as the clock ticks down on his opportunity to withdraw his co-sponsorship from a federal personhood bill, which aims to ban all abortion, even for rape and incest.

Any of us whose work connects us to issues that are surrounded by stigma, silence and, at times, hostility knows that resources can be scarcer, colleagues fewer and more distant, and that the kinds of supports available to others may not be open to us.

Personhood pressure, in its various forms, faced by Gardner as he worked his way to power, is still very much alive within Colorado's GOP, even in Jeffco, one of the entire country's most critical swing counties.

It's clear enough that personhood was one of the foundational building blocks of his climb to Congress, proving Keith Mason correct and shedding light on the short-term gain GOP candidates encounter by joining with anti-abortion activists.

Rep. Paul Ryan was in town last week, and he did a round of interviews on talk radio shows, hoping to find an audience hungry for his new book, which essentially explains how the Tea Party can grab actual control of things.

As Silly Season winds to a close, there were a smattering of 'Obama's on vacation -- how dare he!?!' stories, as usual. Obama has taken less than a third of the days off that President Bush did, but that certainly doesn't stop pundits from complaining every time Obama picks up a golf club.

Women's Equality Day quietly came and went recently, not quite 100 years after passage of the Nineteenth Amendment -- the law that said women were equally entitled, along with men, to the right to vote.